Yearly Archives: 2007

That’s a quote from someone who, forty years ago, was a cornerstone for Christian thought in America. Originally a pastor in St. Louis, he and his wife later moved to Switzerland and established a ministry known as L’Abri. His two most successful books were The Christian Manifesto and another titled How Should We Then Live? Written by Francis Schaeffer, they are terrific apologetics of the Christian Faith. In the late 1970’s, if you did not own a copy of his Christian Manifesto you were suspiciously looked at as unfaithful. (Just kidding.) Being rather scholarly, Schaeffer’s writings are not everyone’s cup of tea, but given a cool, rainy day and lots of time to kill, I’d at least encourage starting one of his books. Even if you don’t get all the way through it, before you notice, you’ll find yourself ‘thinking’ much more than usual.

Francis believed that “modern man’s problem is not getting to the stars, it is the loss of his humanity.” In his books, you get to reading along and come up on the next sentence and think to yourself, “I can’t take another heavy thought right now!” They just seem to come like waves on the beach, one right after another. But when that happens you just lay the book down and wait for another rainy day to try and force more intellect into your brain.

You might look at another book by Schaeffer: True Spirituality. I bought a copy the other day on the Internet for only 75 cents. It’s fairly small and doesn’t take quite as long to put your self through. And, it’s not too scholarly, at least not enough to make you want to wash your head off to cool it down from all the brainwork.

According to Schaeffer, “True Christian life, true spirituality, does not mean just that we have been born again. It must begin there, but it means much more than that. It does not mean only that we are going to be in heaven. It does mean that, but it means much more than that. The true Christian life, true spirituality in the present life, means more than being justified and knowing that I am going to heaven… Our desire must be for a deeper life…it is positive; positive inward reality, and then positive in outward results. It is not just that we are to be dead to certain things, but we are to love God, we are to be alive to Him, in this present moment in history…anything less than this is trifling with God – trifling with Him who created the world, and trifling also the Him who died on the cross.” I hope we all think the Christian life should be more than just getting born again and waiting around 80 years to die. It should be more interesting and entertaining than that. I hope you have a Hope for something profound in between the born again and the dying.

Here’s more: “The Christian life never ends on a negative. There is a negative because man is a rebel. But it does not end there, it always goes on to the positive.” Schaeffer believed that true spirituality always ended on the plus side. “Although the negative should not be over looked in Scripture and our life experience, inevitably life always leads to a positive when based on our Faith in Christ. It is always: death, burial and (praise God) resurrection. In Scripture, we are presented much that starts out as negative and ends on the positive. Scripture patterned often like Galatians 2:20, ‘I am crucified with Christ (negative in its content)… YET! not I but Christ lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh, I live by Faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me.’ ” Correction in the Bible can be quite negative, but it always sweeps over into the positive. (Might look to Romans 6:4 and Galatians 5:15. They are patterned in the same way.)

For Schaeffer, “The reality of living by Faith, as though we were already dead, of living by Faith in open communion with God, and then stepping back into the external world as though we already were raised from the dead, this is not once and for all, it is a matter of moment-by-moment faith, and living moment-by-moment. This morning’s Faith will never do for this noon. The Faith of this noon will never do for supper time…To believe Him, not just when I accepted Christ as Savior, but every moment, one moment at a time: this is the Christian life, and this is true spirituality.”

The result of much of Francis Schaeffer’s thought brings us to the conclusion that God’s grace is sufficient for us. That specific understanding yields a knowledge that God loves us, and that knowledge cast out our fear of God: “Fear falls to the ground when we see before whom we are standing. We are standing in a living relationship with a living God who loves us, and has shown His love for us to such an extent that Jesus died on the cross. Fear falls, and we have the courage to give ourselves for His use without being afraid when we see we are not giving ourselves into the teeth of an impersonal situation, or of a world that hates us, or an inhuman world of men. (Rather) We are offering ourselves before the God who loves us, and He is not a monster, but our heavenly Father.”

“The inward area (our spiritual heart) is the first place of loss in the Christian life, of true spirituality, and the outward sinful act is the result.” Reading Schaeffer’s books are challenges to the Christian intellect and inner thoughts of man, rather than to the outward expression of man’s rebellion. For Schaeffer, it is the heart of man that is evil long before that man manifests the outward expression of the rebellion. (Matthew 15: 16-20) Solomon expressed that in the wisdom of Proverbs 23:7, ‘as a man thinks within himself, so he is.’ It’s the wisdom of God that encourages us not to perfect the flesh in order to be spiritual, but rather to work on the heart, love God and man in order to change the outside expression of a man. (Gal 3:3) The problem with the creature is that his heart is evil first, and the symptom of that is expressed in his outward expression. It is the heart of man that will need to be ‘converted’ before man’s walk can ever be.

Francis Schaeffer is a challenge to us. Nospiritual candy here. I get to reading along and think to myself, “Oh, no, not another thought that I have to try and remember. It’s too much.” The parts that I think I need to try and remember just come too fast. My brain feels like it could burst if I packed in one more idea. But, it’s possible to read if you pick a cool, rainy day. Just take a small portion at a time. Chew on it, but eat slowly. If you’re looking for a good brain ‘workout’ without getting sore, give it a try.

I’m going to leave you with one last little thought from Schaeffer, “…the universe is not what our generation says it is.” Actually, he believes each generation misses the mark on its definition of the universe. He thought that was true of every generation. Each pulls away from the Creator to do business with the created. Each generation tries to solve its problems by rebelling against God, and therefore interprets the universe in its favor, missing the whole purpose and opportunity of the universe and its Creator. Think about that on a rainy day.

By the time you read this letter we will have broadcast the messages found in Contemporary Christian Music for 17 years, 181 days and a few hours. As you have listened, I trust your confidence and understanding of the Love of God has increased over that period of time. If you have listened to us for very long, you know that’s our ultimate goal at the station. Our message has not changed over the years, nor have we wavered from the original ‘vision’ for this radio station. We just feel that discovering God’s amazing Grace is enough to set men and women free from just a simple religious experience. We know it can encourage them on to an intimate daily experience with God. Over the years, we have come to know that the Gospel of Christ is more than an ethic or moral system. It is more that just spending a couple days a week in a formal ceremony to honor some long ago philosopher type that dispensed good ideas. More than just a wise man passing out his hope designed to make the world a better place. No. It’s more than all those things.
On January 8th, 1990, we broadcast for the first time. Our broadcasts have turned into ‘singing’ the message of Christ for just over 9 million minutes. We are here to encourage believers that this can be a 7-day a week, 24-hour a day relationship with God. While most of us waver in and out of that intimacy, we never really lose the relationship He has freely given to us.
If you’ve listened for very long, you know we have broadcast a program called Grace Walk twice each weekday for almost 10 years. Steve McVey is the program’s host. Even though it has been broadcast over and over again, and in spite of having been out of production for almost 8 years now, it is still a refreshing look at the Gospel of Grace taught by the apostle Paul. Each month we receive Steve’s newsletter. This month I wanted to share with you the ‘gracevine’ note Steve sent.
His teachings are generally pretty close to our expression and vision for WBVN. His June newsletter is an expression of what we feel it will take for any of us to go further into the intimacy that God has ‘cheered’ us on to. I hope Steve’s simple message is an encouragement for you to consider.

How To Love Jesus More?
For years I prayed, asking the Lord to help me love Him more. Have you ever prayed something like that? As I grew in my own grace walk, I began to understand the key to loving Him more. The answer is so different from what I used to believe.
In the past I would have said that to love Him more we needed to spend more time with the Lord in prayer and in the Bible. I would have said that we needed to spend time with other people who love Him to increase our love for Him. (I even used the illustration of how one piece of charcoal will grow cold if it is set off by itself, but in a pile it will stay red hot.) I spoke of how our love for Jesus grows through serving Him. I argued that the ‘service approach’ to loving Jesus wasn’t a fake-it-‘til-you-make-it approach, but instead was a faith-it-‘til-you-make-it approach.
It all sounded so good, so right, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. Of course, we can experience a sense of intimacy as we pray and read the Bible. We are able to be encouraged by the company of other Christians and we may find fulfillment as we serve Jesus. However, these things aren’t the key to experiencing intimacy with God. In fact, you can do all of these things with great commitment and still be spiritually cold. I’m not minimizing the value of the actions mentioned above, but I’m simply pointing out that ‘doing all the right things’ won’t necessarily generate intimacy. What then, is the key to loving our Father more? It is so simple that it’s hard to believe that I missed it for so long. What is the key to loving God more? It is to grow in our understanding of how much He loves us. That’s it – growing in our understanding of how much He loves us will cause us to love Him more. 1 John 4:19 says that ‘we love Him because He first loved us.’ Do you want to grow in your love for Christ? Then grow in accepting His love for you. Nurture yourself in the realization of His passionate and lavish grace. See Him holding you, hugging you, kissing you. Accept the reality that He is proud of you, that He adores you.

“But it isn’t about me!” one person recently protested when he heard me share this truth. “No”, I answered, “it isn’t about you and to think that the key to your relationship to God is for you to love Him more puts the burden of intimacy on you, not Him. You’re right. It’s about Him.” The essence of the gospel is that God so loved us that He gave His only begotten Son. That’s the gospel. He loves you. Stop trying to love Him more and simply accept His acceptance of you and watch what happens. You’ll be amazed at how much your love for Him will increase.

Steve McVey, PO Box 3669, Riverview, Fl 33568, (800-472-2311)
I remember a story Steve tells about a little boy, who was asked if he had found God. The boy’s reply was ‘I didn’t know He was lost.’ It’s so important that we realize that we do not seek God, but that God came looking for us! That’s one of the real differences between our Faith and all the other religious groups worldwide. In our Faith, God is seeking us out, seeking us for the object of His amazing Grace. That’s part of what makes it amazing. We’ve learned over the years that the thing that brings us nearer to God, the thing that draws us closer to the heart of God, is not a revelation of the ‘sorry’ condition we find ourselves in, rather it’s in the revelation of Him. Who He is, what He has done about us, that’s the thing that causes us to be changed from ‘glory to glory’. We can ‘work on us’ from now through all eternity and still not get to the place that we are justified or feel we are good enough to stand before God. However, understanding we can stand before God ‘just as we are’ is the thing that originally made us new Creatures. A revelation of His acceptance is the thing that refreshes us each day.
Ephesians 3: 17-18; ‘…that you, being rooted and grounded in His love may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and the length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge that you might be filled up to all the fullness of God.’ To understand all the dimensions of God, to know the fullness of Him, to know Him in all the ways possible, we will have to be rooted and stabilized in His love. We might understand some things about Him but we will never understand the fullness of Him without a foundation of the Love of God for us. It must be our first and foremost understanding or we will never understand the completeness of God. Jesus wisely warned us that if we did not come to understand the depth of his forgiveness for the whole world we could never understand the fullness of his passion for us. If we get that wrong, we will become insecure and double-minded in the very relationship He has paid such a high price for. The Father’s cry is not so much ‘stop your trespassing’ as much as it is ‘come unto Me’. God’s passion for us is as Rich Mullins described a ‘reckless raging fury that they call the love of God.’